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I've recently had a guilty moment that forced me to think logically about owning a car like the Mercedes Gullwing, the Masterati GT, the SL65 Black or the Audi R8. The moment in question was viewing a A$2.65m apartment and realising my income doesn't stretch to cover both supercar and stepping up on the apartment front.

In Australia, there are two supercar clubs: P1 and The Supercar Club. If there are others I've not included of similar vein, please comment and enlighten me. These clubs operate on the basis that you just want to enjoy a variety of cars and not deal with the mundane aspects of ownership.

Both of them work on a similar basis: pay a subscription, get points & use them up via a matrix program that is influenced by the type of car & the day(s) of the year.

So, a bit of research:

Both have a similar A$4,500 joining fee; and

P1 has plans ranging from A$27,000-A$36,000 per annum and Supercar Club has plans ranging from A$18,000-A$72,000 per annum.

Now at this point in the research I'm beginning to suspect they are run by the same mob... P1's three plans match almost exactly Supercar Club's middle three plans... down to the names. If that is the case, that is clever positioning: create the competition (that you own) thereby validating the market and appearing to provide consumers choice & competition. They'd also have a higher usage of cars (as they are shared) and thereby have a higher return on assets.

Back to the research:

Trying to compare apples to apples (which none of the customers I interact with in my job do), let's take the Indianapolis packages of both - ~A$27,000 per annum;

Looking at what those points get you, it appears Supercar Club's point program is slightly simpler as P1's program has seasonal variations with winter being the most points economical, autumn & spring carrying a 50% premium and summer carrying a 100% premium. Additionally, weekends on P1 carry a 200% premium over weekdays where as Supercar Club's varies from 200% to slightly above 100% depending on the Group (see next bullet point). To make matters more complicated, it would seem the winter rate for P1 is a discount to the autumn & spring rates which are comparable to Supercar Club. To try and make comparison's simple, we'll use P1's autumn & spring rates;

Both rank car's similarly from groups 1 through 5 with very similar cars in each. Supercar Club provides bikes as well. I'd really only be interested in Groups 1 to 3 (P1 rate them inversely to Supercar Club where this would be Groups 5 to 3) and I think I prefer the cars in Supercar Club; and

Comparing Group 3 cars in both and using the rates outlined in bullet point 3 above, both have weekend rates of 27 points. That would get you 18 days with Supercar Club and 20 days with P1 (assuming you can only use 'full' days of points and not part thereof).

At this point I'd encourage someone to check my math... since I did only attain 39% for this subject in my HSC (why the heck they don't let you use spreadsheets I don't know! I'd have kicked ass.).

Okay, so let's use round numbers and say 20 days per annum. That's just 10 weeks per year of Sat & Sun usage. Not a lot of days to enjoy an Aston Martin Vantage or a Porsche Carrera, neither of which I'd rate much higher than my SLK55.

Now, ROI time:

Looking at the cost of a A$200k car, you are up for approximately A$40k per annum in leasing, insurance, rego, tyres and servicing. I'm not going to factor in petrol as you'd have to pay this 'usage cost' for both scenarios; and

Comparing that to the A$27k per annum cost of the clubs, plus the A$16k for a new Mazda MX-5 as your everyday car (again only including leasing, insurance, rego, tyres and servicing for that car).

Mmm. Close enough to break even. I think I want the 37 minutes of my life back it took to figure that out and blog it. :-)

I guess I haven't factored in depreciation of the MX-5 vs a $200k car, especially if you are using the Porsche or Aston as your every day car, so that would tilt things in favor of the club (and provide me a sense that that 37 minutes was not futile!).

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About Me

Name: Lee Gale

Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia

I'm a 31 year old male living in Sydney.
My family life consists of my partner of 10 years, our combined parents and sisters, our Beagle and our cat.
My Linked In profile has the full scoop on my work history.
I have a real passion for the combination of business and technology. The technology that surrounds us today does seriously impress me and I love the challenge of working with the talented brains that make it possible as well as customers wanting to apply it to their problems.